


Annel

by MessengerGabriel



Series: The Merry Wives of Witchers [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski, wit - Fandom
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Romance, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25794520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MessengerGabriel/pseuds/MessengerGabriel
Summary: The first passage in the journal starts abruptly.I really wasn’t expecting to like it here. My father was a bastard, attempting to sell me to the Witcher who killed off the griffon who was eating our sheep.  I was eighteen.  And the Witcher immediately laid him out into the mud, anger ingrained into every line on his face.  My father was out cold.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Lambert, Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s), Original Male Character(s)/Original Male Character(s)
Series: The Merry Wives of Witchers [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1786249
Comments: 25
Kudos: 499





	Annel

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy this look into the past of the Wives of the Wolf school. I had so much fun making this character and adding to the lore of the Merry Wives of Witchers.  
> Annel and her story is something I loved to write, and a good look into how a Wife could come to the school and how their life would play out.
> 
> Happy Reading! 
> 
> \--Ducky

The first passage in the journal starts abruptly. 

_ I really wasn’t expecting to like it here. My father was a bastard, attempting to sell me to the Witcher who killed off the griffon who was eating our sheep. I was eighteen. And the Witcher immediately laid him out into the mud, anger ingrained into every line on his face. My father was out cold. _

_ The man introduced himself as Gardis, a young Witcher. This was only his second season on the Path, and after taking all of the gold off my father that he was owed, he offered to take me to the next town. Or anywhere I’d like. I left with him after taking only what I needed. We traveled to the next town, just as small as my father’s. I did not stay, I left again with Gardis. I followed him for weeks into Summer and Autumn, learning that the life on the Path as a Witcher was a hard, brutal one.  _

_ He was almost always driven off once they saw me with him, accusing him of such horrible terrible things. After the third time I entered before him, getting a room in an inn and speaking about how my brother was going to be following me the next coming days. My feelings for him were something new, I should perhaps love him like a brother. But I could not. I found myself falling in love with the gentle man. How he would always feed me first, insist I bathe before him, even when he was covered in gore. He was respectful and kind, and oh so sweet. _

_ He left me in the Winter that year, not before helping convince a healing woman to take me on as an assistant for the season. And when Spring came so did he. I traveled with him again on the Path, this time patching his wounds. I turned nineteen on the path. I spent the Winter helping an archivist.  _

_ I turned twenty on the path. And I told Gardis how I loved him. The poor man did not stop blushing for such a long time. Gardis then sat me down and told me about the Wives of Witchers. Who they were and how important they were. And that if I came with him I would be a wife, and what that would mean. I accepted that. I wanted that. I loved him, and I knew I could love the others.  _

_ My initiation was intense and lovely. I felt wonderful. I felt their love. And I learned to love the Keep, and the life here.  _

_ My first Howling was terrible. I couldn’t stand to look at the pyre. How could I just accept that they would be gone forever? Not even a body to bury. It’s been years now.  _

_ I’ve led a service now. It was almost worse than the Howling. Burying that tiny body. Watching his sweet young face disappear into the ground. Knowing I would never hold him again, never hear this baby’s laugh again. Never see the man he would grow into... _

The paper is smudged here, the ink has run and the writer had not restored the letters. It hides the start of the next passage, an indeterminate amount of time after the first. 

_...I know that crying would not bring him back but Caden was  _ **_mine_ ** _. My first boy. And now I do not know how to do it again. _

The previous passages are not signed, or dated. The next is, and from Jaskier’s reckoning it was written around four hundred years before the raids. It is in the same hand. 

_ We have a new Initiate today. Barely off his mother’s teat. And of course that cunt mage Vernerot thinks there is no problem in taking a child as payment. The poor dear’s lips were blue when he was given to us. And in the Solar, no less. Gardis was furious. Ran Vernerot right out of there. That stupid mage should know by now not to poke a grown wolf. He’s been here long enough. I start to wonder if they’re in love with pain, giving it and receiving it. They are sick enough in the head. _

_ The baby had no name, and they’ve given him to me. Hoping I’ll get better, I suppose. Since Caden I haven’t felt much happiness. Not among the wives, not the little ones, not even my husbands can rouse my joy. _

_ I feel bitter. _

_ But this little one needs me. I am glad he is not anything like Caden. Blond and green eyed baby he is. I am to name him. Vesemir I think, a strong name. I hope he lives up to it. _ __

The second passage ends. The following ones detail the Wolf Wife Annel’s feelings about Vesemir growing up. Pages and pages on her son, everything Jaskier could ever want to learn about Vesemir was here. His favorite snacks, which were apparently candied violets, very rare at the Keep but Annel had made sure he got one for every birthday he was with her. The pranks he got up to—he had earned himself a punishment after dripping honey into the scabbards of an older initiate who had tripped him in front of the fencing instructor. The poor boy had come running to Annel after he was discovered as the perpetrator. 

Vesemir had not been fond of spankings during his childhood. 

And she recorded her concern over how as he grows up the more stoic he is, no more pranks, and rejecting the candied violets. 

Later into the journal she weeps all over one page, a single line in very shaky script.  _ He lives, my boy lives. _

The passages about Vesemir and Annel’s life continue for the rest of the journal. She writes about more Howlings, how it does not get easier but it does not freeze her anymore. She bemoans the mages she interacts with, and rails against their collective incompetence when it comes to remembering that pain is not a natural state.

A new Witcher enter’s Annel’s life, Cain. He had been on the Path when she entered Wifehood. He would be staying at the keep for a while, to recover from a Kikimora wound. Apparently he found Annel the most beautiful wife. Annel writes of their romantic courtship. Cain gave her necklaces of fangs and bone, carved with protective runes. And apparently very very bad poetry. She then writes how he and Gardis fit well as brothers, and how she loved both so very much. After Vesemir leaves for the Path she travels with Cain and Gardis on alternating seasons whenever she can. 

Years and years of her travels on the Path are recorded; pages and pages on ways to heal, how to convince children to take medicine, lullabies and ways to make easy poor-man’s toys. Jaskier is  _ touched  _ by this fierce woman. She obviously loves her husbands, fellow wives, and every child that enters the keep. She keeps loving them, even after they are gone.

Gardis takes over writing for a small while: Annel is sick. Terribly so. The mages apparently could not help her. The sickness spread so quickly through her body, a cure the day before would do nothing the next. Her body seemed like it was trying to kill her.

Gardis writes in joy and sadness, hope glowing out of an earlier passage, Annel seemed to get better for a time, and then those hopes were dashed. The time between those two cycles, getting smaller and smaller.

Gardis writes how he and Cain had gone onto the Path to try and find any kind of cure for her, but they could not. Any healer or mage they sought out told them that had Annel been anyone  _ but  _ a Witcher’s wife she would have been long dead from the sickness. They advised that they let her die, the struggle was only prolonging her pain. Not surprisingly those passages were short, Jaskier could only imagine Gardis and Cain’s reaction to that proclamation. 

Eventually in late fall Gardis and Cain make it back to Kaer Morhen, just in time to say goodbye to Annel. It is written by another wife that she passes surrounded by her fellow wives, her loving husbands, and all of the children in the keep.

The next passages are written by her loved ones. Gardis and Cain write passages of love to their favored wife, remembering times with her and promising to meet her in the afterlife. Vesemir (dated the winter after her death), writes to his mother, angry over not being able to say goodbye, how much he loved her. This angry Vesemir is so different from the one Jaskier knows now. 

Jaskier realizes that with all that he had heard of the mages in the journals there are no accounts written  _ by  _ mages anywhere in the library. Not unless you counted the healing and potion books, and large portions of those are also written by Witchers. It is strange, but he guesses that mages did not integrate too much into the keep, not with the children (who probably feared them), the wives (who seemed to strongly dislike them), and the full grown Witchers (who were willing to chase off the mages when they “overstepped”). 

As Jaskier continues to read from the old wives (anyone over the age of one hundred is  _ old _ ) he learns more about how he’s supposed to care for his wolves. Jaskier learns more about the Wives’ territory from a woman named Edea. She was in charge of the chores at the keep, part of the “younger” generation of the wives she gave advice of unscented soaps or at least very very subtly scented. 

Recipes of scents, soaps, and oils were in her journals. Diagrams of machines to do laundry faster were painstakingly drawn in, not unlike some machines used by servants in very wealthy Noble households. Sewing and embroidery patterns were pressed between different pages, Jaskier recognized some very outdated Cintran and Redanian fashion. Not all of them had been used but each gift was noted to be given and received with love.

Edea’s book had a lot more involvement of other wives, she was a lot more sociable with the others. It was more of a record of methods and knowledge than personal information. Though Edea did add notes and thoughts in the margins about how she liked certain methods over others. Her journal also contained sections from other wives she was close to during her time at Kaer Morhen. There were three others she seemed quite close to. 

Brigette was a frequent writer in the sections on sewing, contributing new and different patterns of clothing, for all the inhabitants of the Keep. Apparently her gifts were more appreciated by the other wives, not the Initiates, who were not a fan of having to patch every rip they gained during training. Brigette had many drawings of altered patterns to make room for the more broad shoulders and thighs of the Witchers. Nobles tended to be more round than sculpted. 

Rachela contributed to the random bits of poetry found throughout. Nursery rhymes and short patterned paragraphs that Jaskier could recognize from Oxenfurt’s history section. The older rhyming scheme from a couple hundred years ago helped to lay the foundation of the more modern ballad formatting. If he had shown this to a professor at Jaskier’s alma mater, he would have been paid his weight in gold for it. 

A third wife Brialla had many rambling half torn notes on machinery and uses of Witchers to haul water. Jaskier agreed, Witchers hauling any kind of water should be shirtless, all in the name of clean clothes of course. Brialla had also written about a series of pulleys and dumbwaiters that had been installed in the towers of the Keep, anything to keep the mages away from the kitchens (the long complaints informed Jaskier that the mages tended to invade the kitchens and take food without letting the Wives know, causing problems in inventory records and management. Brialla’s bill of materials was quite impressive). Her curses were as well.

Lambert is the one who finds Jaskier in the library with the intention of dinner. He makes a distressed noise when he sees tears running down his wife’s face.

“Jask? Jaskier are you alright?”

“It--It’s just. These women, they are so sweet, and  _ happy _ , and it just hit me. How much they loved you all.”

Lambert sank down to his knees in front of his wife, not yet looking at him. “They did,” he paused and took a deep breath, “I remember so much love from them. The days of just, pain after pain and then the relief that came from being by a Mother. That even after all the agony of training and Trials...there was someone who loved me. Who wanted me happy.”

Jaskier feels more tears well up and run over, he feels as if his heart is too full. “Oh Lambert…”

He leans his forehead against his husband’s, eyes slowly closing. They breathe together as one. After a moment their eyes open again and meet. Their gentle moment of silence continues. And oh so slowly they meet in an equally gentle kiss. 


End file.
